6-month doctor's appointment

Today baby had his 6-month checkup.  They measure the circumference of his head, measure his length, and weigh him.  In the past he's been well behaved at the doctor's but I think he's starting to make negative associations with the table you sit on.  He was fine while the nurse measured his length, which is probably the least accurate measurement they take.  The nurse draws a line on the medical paper at the top of his head then tries to hold him straight and measure at his feet.  The problem is, our baby likes to kick and squirm so much it can't be perfect.

To get his weight I strip him down to just his diaper and they take him to the comfort of a freezing cold, stainless steel (with a sheet of medical paper) balance scale.  He immediately starts screaming when he get put on the scale, probably because of the cold.  For the rest of the visit, any time he gets put down, he screams.  The balance requires a minute or two to find the weight, and his squirming and rolling around didn't make it any easier.  Every time he moves and puts force on the tray arm of the scale starts swinging again and the nurse has to adjust again.  If you're unfamiliar with a balance, remind me not to invite you when we need people in an emergency shelter after some apocalyptic cataclysm.  A balance is the most accurate type of scale; other scales rely on a tensioned spring or pneumatics or some other new-fangled method to measure weight, but a balance simply uses a lever to compare two items.  One side has the item to be weighed, and on the other you add weights until the two sides balance.  In the doctor's office the weights are built into the scale.  The fulcrum of the lever is very close to the little weights on the doctor's scale, so it doesn't have to have your exact weight to be in balance.  The little weights proportionally match your weight at whatever ratio the position of the fulcrum dictates.  I'm sure this is all very fascinating.

I didn't mean what I said earlier about the emergency shelter and the apocalypse.  I don't have an emergency shelter, and I'm not expecting the apocalypse.  If I did, I would indiscriminately let as many people in as supplies or the nature of the destruction permit.  Family members have dibs.

I knew at his 6-month appointment he would need some inoculations and of course would be getting a shot.  I didn't know he would need four shots and a vial of some sort.  They told me there is a shortage of the last shot he had, so they would have to give four separate shots instead.  I head from the nurse and the doctor that there was a shortage, then the nurse who gave the shot told me it was because of rationing.  My first thought was that he's not going to like getting four separate shots, and then I thought of the war in Iraq and wondered if the rationing is because of it.  It could just be because of a bad crop of vaccines this year, I have no idea.

He took them pretty well, in part because I think the nurse did a good job giving them.  She gave him two shots in each leg, and didn't give him a chance to squirm away or anything while she did it.  I got to hold him in my lab, which was good, but I had to hold his hands so he didn't hurt himself with them as he was getting the shots.  I didn't know exactly how he could hurt himself with them, maybe by poking himself in the eye or grabbing the needle somehow, but you do what the nurse tells you.

He cried really hard for a minute or two, and I comforted him by rocking and singing to him.  This helped a lot, but he was down to his diaper and falling asleep; it was almost nap time.  I still had to get him dressed and I didn't want to have to wake him up again, and when I put him down to get him dressed that started a whole new round of crying.  Lately he's been crying a little when I've been trying to get him dressed; I think he doesn't want to bother putting on pants and long-sleeve shirts.  He wants to be awake and start playing right away.

He stopped crying shortly after going in his carseat, then went to sleep almost immediately when we got in the car.  I think it's a good strategy to take baby to the doctor a little before nap time.  It might not seem like a good idea, because the baby might be cranky while getting the shots, but they're going to cry no matter what.  This way when the bad stuff goes down the baby is ready to sleep as soon as he is calm.  I'm going to try it again next time and see how it works.  He's got a flu shot next week and the appointment is at about the same time, hopefully it doesn't backfire somehow.